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Idle Thumbs Megathread | Indepth discussion inbetween horsebags and birdsounds

A

ACE 1991

Member
Jake said:
UR MR GAY and that one Nintendo handheld cartridge which allegedly said "Islam is the light!" to some dad are our favorite ten year old things to repeatedly reference for no reason.
Click to expand...

Wow, I just looked up the "Islam is the light!" story. That's amazing and hilarious, holy shit.
 
B

blamite

Member
So that "Hidden my game by mom" that Chris mentioned this episode is actually very good! It's just 30 short puzzles so you can easily finish it in like 20 minutes but it's definitely worth it.

In a weird way it reminded me of two old Japanese Flash games I played back in high school; Egg Way and Double Wires. I doubt there's any actual connection between those games and this one, but I guess just being a weird simple Japanese flash-like game made me think of them.

(Also I got the Original shirt recently and it is indeed the most comfortable shirt I have ever owned!)

edit: omg apparently the dev(s?) of the two Flash games I mentioned also released a game called Cat With Bow Golf, which is also very good in a 2007 Flash game way.
 
J

Jintor

Member
yeah i just moved back to australia. 9 gigs was, like, about six hours or so, so 50 gigs is probably, i don't know, eternity
 
H

haendeul

Member
Rufus said:
It shows install size, I think.
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Yeah, the store page shows the install size which is 45gb. But the downloaded compressed files were 22.7. I still spent 8 hours downloading it since I've moved to a place with slower internet.

zpujdPb.png
 
B

blamite

Member
Shaneus said:
Did you get the "proper" ending?
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Hmm, I had assumed that I did, but if there's more than one then I'm not sure.
Leaving the room on the final day/the little bonus video you get afterwards?

Oh, I just realized the random mode had new stages, so I probably didn't!
 
S

Shaneus

Member
blamite said:
Hmm, I had assumed that I did, but if there's more than one then I'm not sure.
Leaving the room on the final day/the little bonus video you get afterwards?
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's the one I meant. Otherwise you could think you finished it just by getting the game console.
 
ebullientprism

ebullientprism

Member
I ditched it a while back. Then ran out of things to listen to a couple of weeks ago so dove back in and checked out the last 5-6 episodes. Its actually pretty decent.
 
J

Jintor

Member
The problem I think is the inconsistent quality these days... But with nick back the standard of off the wall batshit stories has been slowly rising.

I want to make a hitman stories supercut at some point
 
S

SL128

Member
paperboywriter said:
what happend to idle thumbs and this thread. It was hugely popular at one point here on GAF at least. Last bump is from 2 weeks ago..
Click to expand...
From Chris on March 25th:
Chris Remo said:
We have been trying to pare down the show recently to very rarely be more than three people. (Special cases like someone being in from out of town for GDC or whatever are exceptions.) This isn't detail I was planning on sharing, but whatever, it's not really that big a deal: Idle Thumbs lost a LOT of listeners when the cast of the show grew too big and we turned into sort of a weekly game of musical chairs. I am strongly convinced that this is not because of the presence or lack of any particular combination of people, but rather because the changing combination of people made the show unpredictable and inconsistent from week to week. Not necessarily inconsistent in terms of end quality of each individual episode, but inconsistent in terms of tone and listener expectation. I don't imagine this hurt the show much for people here on the forums, since you folks know us all really well relatively speaking, but I think the larger listening audience, especially people who haven't been listening as long, would just kind of lose interest over time when it seemed like they didn't know which version of the show they were going to get week by week.

We also think it's conversationally manageable with three people, and gets really tough with four (and especially five). We have such an unstructured style, with lots of interruptions and cross-talk, that when you go above three, things get dicey--again, probably not as big a deal for the longtime hardcore listeners, but I think often very frustrating and difficult to parse for many. Once you have four people, you're in the zone when you can have two different parallel small conversations, and that is the absolute worst. It also kind of sucked for me to have to deal with scheduling a different group of people each week, where people who weren't me and Jake could basically decide arbitrarily whether they were going to be on or not; that's just inevitably how free-time projects end up if you don't have a really strong requirement that a specific group of people always show up. So it has made things much easier to just assume "Okay, this group of three is going to be on every week, and if someone absolutely cannot make it, we'll figure out a sub." I am completely certain that Sean will still end up on episodes. In terms of the default week to week configuration it has just made it a way less hectic show to have a consistent group.
Click to expand...
 
B

BlueScrote

Member
I think it has definitely nosedived in quality in the last year or so. I feel like every joke and gag gets taken on for 20 minutes too long.
 
P

paperboywriter

Member
I'm gonna give it another shot, loved the first 50 episodes to death (I probably listened to those episodes like 5 times each) but I fell off after the kickstarter. To be quite honest because I didn't really like Sean and Daniel as regulars.
 
M

Mafro

Member
I think it's back to how good it used to be now it's just Chris, Nick and Jake. I liked Sean when he used to be on as a guest every now and then but when he became a regular I felt he dominated the discussion far too much and he always went off on a tangent for ages. Was sad to see Danielle go.
 
G

gabbo

Member
Mafro said:
I think it's back to how good it used to be now it's just Chris, Nick and Jake. I liked Sean when he used to be on as a guest every now and then but when he became a regular I felt he dominated the discussion far too much and he always went off on a tangent for ages. Was sad to see Danielle go.
Click to expand...

Sean should be much like Steve was on the original run of episodes. If he's free and interested, he can be fourth chair, but I agree that he does tend to overtake the conversation.

I have enjoyed the three man episodes of late though.
 
P

paperboywriter

Member
gabbo said:
Sean should be much like Steve was on the original run of episodes. If he's free and interested, he can be fourth chair, but I agree that he does tend to overtake the conversation.

I have enjoyed the three man episodes of late though.
Click to expand...

Steve is a much better guest. Just love him. Sean's grenade down the hill story was the bomb though.
 
J

Jintor

Member
I think this is a problem Thumbs has always had but there's always so much 'um'... dead air sometimes when they don't segue smoothly into another topic and then they just sort of joke about the awkwardness and goof on it for like 3-5 minutes? Which is great once or twice but I've been listening to them for a couple of years at this point and, well, yeah.
 
E

Empty

Member
it got bad during the firewatch development years. basically only danielle was worth tuning in for.

think now they've got a reliable group and have more time to play games and think about them properly instead of pontificating tediously based on no evidence, it's been consistently enjoyable again.
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
Fwiw, I think the show has really improved this year. :)
 
P

Pikelet

Member
I feel like the show has improved fairly significantly lately, though i wish Sean was on more often as he is one of my favourites.

I do agree with Chris that the three-person format works better for this particular group of people though.
 
M

mooooose

Member
I used to listen all the time from like '08 - '10 and fell off after you guys left again, but I'm back and love this podcast again. You guys are the best!
 
N

Nappuccino

Member
I missed their in game stories. Now they have in game stories, so all is right with the world.

I do start to zone out when they read long emails chronicling some absurd thing like CSGO betting, though. I get that a lot of people like those stories, but I'd honestly rather just read a brief article lol.
 
J

jetsetrez

Member
paperboywriter said:
I'm gonna give it another shot, loved the first 50 episodes to death (I probably listened to those episodes like 5 times each) but I fell off after the kickstarter. To be quite honest because I didn't really like Sean and Daniel as regulars.
Click to expand...
Exactly the same on every point here for me. An occasional Sean or Steve is fine, but I just don't enjoy it as much when it isn't Chris/Jake/Nick silliness. Never enjoyed Danielle either (no offense, she did actually play games at least, but I just didn't find her funny at all, and felt the humor of everyone else get sucked out of the room when she was on as well, and I couldn't relate to almost anything she played).

Maybe I'll give it another shot if it's back to Chris, Jake, and Nick as the regulars.
 
T

thenexus6

Member
Danielle bothered me only because whenever a joke was made, she'd laugh repeat it word for word and continue laughing. Lot a little annoying after a while.
 
S

Sloane

Banned
Personally, I really like the podcast again since it went back to it being just Chris, Nick, and Jake. I had actually stopped listening for a while after being a Thumbs' reader since 2004 or whatever because the switching configurations ("Remember that conversation from last week? Oh, no, you weren't there!") and the apparent lack of enthusiasm for games were pretty annoying, but to me it feels like they are back in form, thanks to Bredon. Streams are fun, too.
 
ebullientprism

ebullientprism

Member
I think, for me, it helps that its back to the original crew (never much cared for the new add ons) and that they are playing games that I have an interest in. For a while the podcast was just talking about mobile games, obscure indie stuff and peripheral stuff like Gamergate etc. none of which interest me so I tended to tune out and just stopped listening after a while.

I should check out the stream again at some point. I saw Nick playing Dark Souls 3 and it was fun.

Edit : Just a suggestion, they should list the games they talk about in the podcast description. Its there on the website, but on my Android app I get nothing.
 
R

Rodney McKay

Member
paperboywriter said:
what happend to idle thumbs and this thread. It was hugely popular at one point here on GAF at least. Last bump is from 2 weeks ago..
Click to expand...

Personally, I think I started losing interest Idle Thumbs about 2 years ago.

The jokes had gotten a bit stale for me (baboo, wizaaaaaard, etc.) and I rarely had any interest in the games they were discussing. Specifically, I got incredibly tired of when Chris (I think it was him) was addicted to Spelunky. At first I liked it, but it started to feel like every week that was the only game they really cared to talk about.

And I think around that time the crew didn't really play many games anyway. I do understand that after the show originally ended they went to work for actual game companies instead of writing about games, so that limits the amount of games they are exposed to and have time to play on a weekly basis, but it sadly stopped being as relevant to my interests.

Every few months if I run out of podcasts I'll try it out again, but it's never stuck with me enough again to completely resubscribe.
 
M

MehsterChief

Member
I have to agree with the others.

While zthe podcast was never "bad", there was this weird period of Spelunky/DOTA 2 conversations that weren't all that interesting.

But now we're back to god tier, where every episode is great!
It's so good that Nick is back. Not only is he very entertaining, but he also brings out the best in the others.
 
A

ArjanN

Member
ebullientprism said:
I think, for me, it helps that its back to the original crew (never much cared for the new add ons) and that they are playing games that I have an interest in. For a while the podcast was just talking about mobile games, obscure indie stuff and peripheral stuff like Gamergate etc. none of which interest me so I tended to tune out and just stopped listening after a while.

I should check out the stream again at some point. I saw Nick playing Dark Souls 3 and it was fun.

Edit : Just a suggestion, they should list the games they talk about in the podcast description. Its there on the website, but on my Android app I get nothing.
Click to expand...

I think it's more that they're now actually have some time again to play games at all. For a while it was definitely just whatever Chris played on his phone half an hour, and the rest was discussion about what they assumed some big new game was like based on playing half the tutorial and what they'd heard on twitter. The best discussion is always when they have actually had time to really dig into a game.
 
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